Demise of Hostess sparks national Twinkie mania

The sudden dissolution of Hostess and its snack empire took me by surprise.

First of all, I hadn’t been paying much attention, rapt as I was by the spiraling of Mitt Romney’s descent into political limbo and the accompanying soul searching of the Republican Party.

But more to the point, I was late to the national sigh over the demise of the Twinkie because I had been out of the Twinkie groove for too many years.

At some point, probably when my own children were clamoring for brightly wrapped, chemical-based sugary fare in the grocery store, I went to war against Sno Balls, Ding Dongs and CupCakes.

This made me sanctimonious and annoying, but it also made me forget how much I had clamored myself for artificially yellow sponge cake infused with fake white pastry cream.

A cri de coeur via text from my oldest and dearest friend brought me up to speed.

“I have spent the day in search of soon to be obsolete Hostess treats,” she wrote from our nation’s capital on the day after the sad announcement. “Finally was successful and just bought the last 6 Hostess Twinkies.”

Though I hadn’t had so much as a bite of a Twinkie in 25 years, I was immediately seized by a sudden urge to hoard them.

I was 11 years old again and begging for a Twinkie, just one single Twinkie, in my lunch while my mother stood firm and implacable on the side of health.

The fact that the lunches she made for me were awful didn’t matter. The bananas might have been dark and the peanut butter sandwiches made using the heels of the bread, but that bread was whole wheat, by God.

We struck a brief deal when I was in sixth grade and she allowed me to take a Twinkie once a week when I stayed at school for noon band.

I lost my bid for bologna and Lay’s potato chips, but I never missed a band day.

Now, faced with my friend’s Twinkie-inspired predicament, I felt compelled to go out into the world in search of the lingering remnants of the Hostessian empire for her.

Armed with instructions — first she wanted more Twinkies, then “the chocolate cupcakes with the white squiggle,” with a cherry pie, fallback lemon, as her third choice — I headed to the grocery store.

I was not the first to do so.

The shelves were already Hostess-free, with the exception of the inferior goods: individual coffee cakes, blueberry muffins and the miniature chocolate doughnuts, Donettes, in a bag.

At the convenience store, only Little Debbie took up the snack shelves, the lone Hostess wayfarer a package of miniature white doughnuts.

And the same held true at the second grocery store I tried, though this time there were no empty spaces, as though Hostess had been indelibly wiped from the national memory.

It was time to check in.

“The little donuts?” I texted my friend.

“Tough call …” she wrote back, and I returned two packages to the shelf.

Chagrined by failure, I headed home, where I briefly cheered up at the idea of surprising her with a home delivery of Hostess delights ordered online.

And I could do just that, if I were only willing to pay $224.50 for a package of 100 Twinkies on Amazon.

“They are scalping Hostess online!” I wrote.

“Heard that — amazing!” she texted back. “I just found a cherry pie and a lemon pie, so I am standing down.”

As did I.

That evening, my husband, who had paid even less attention to the seismic shift in snack land than I had, belatedly began to reminisce.

“Why is no one talking about Yodels?” he mused. “Or Ring Dings? Did everyone forget about them? Drake is part of Hostess now.”

He paused, and I knew what was coming.

“Did I ever tell you the story of how when I was a kid I once ate 100 Devil Dogs to get one free ticket to a Mets’ game? I had to mail in 10 box tops! And I didn’t even like the Mets.”